Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (20 page)

Back to the party. It had to be done. Pop songs on different stereos bashed up against each other, people leaned over banisters
and screamed – could have been from happiness or horror, I wasn’t sure. In the rec room, a crowd of kids were belting out
the chorus to a Duran Duran song from Junior High. I wandered around trying to make sense of it all. My skin was still vibrating
with the memory of being touched, like ocean waves washing over me. There was no sign of Mark anywhere.

Then it was late and I was alone. A lot of people had left at that point, and the ones who remained were pooled in areas of
concentrated activity like the rec room and the back lawn, or siphoned off into private spaces in pairs. I was huddled on
the floor with my back to the fridge,
clutching a handful of souvenir magnets that had come skidding down after me. ‘Visit glorious Maine,’ they advised me. ‘Alberta
is wild rose country.’ ‘I coasted up Magnetic Hill.’

So unfair. Where was Tokyo? New York? Paris? Who would want to remember Magnetic Fucking Hill in New Brunswick? Pity and exhaustion
settled over me like a physical weight. By the time Adam found me, I could barely lift my head.

We could never leave each other alone for long. Since we’d got back from the barn, Adam and I had spent most of the party
stuck together – wedged on a couch or stumbling through the halls, wrapped in some private joke, ignoring everybody and avoiding
Lana. Every once in a while, we’d decide we had to split up because we were making a spectacle of ourselves. But then we’d
get lonely and seek each other out again. So it must have been his turn to be lonely.

Adam settled in beside me on the linoleum. I let my head loll forwards till it thumped against his chest, took a handful of
his plaid shirt and hid my face with it. It was my shirt. He was in the Riverside guy’s uniform, the sleeves looking like
they’d split if he bent his arms. I was in his black T-shirt and jacket. A mix-up from when we’d had to get out of the hayloft
so fast. He’d told Lana I was just helping him blend in with the locals.

‘You okay, Stephen?’

‘Yeah.’ A small voice mumbling into him. ‘No.’

He pushed my head up so he could see my face. I felt like I was on a hinge. I tried to tell Adam how much I was going to miss
him. He didn’t answer, seemed preoccupied with an empty beer bottle that was stuck to his finger. Maybe it had attacked him.
The whole kitchen was bristling with empties, hollow green and brown glass crowding the counters, the table, the stove, the
sink.

‘Makes me sick,’ I said. ‘You. Going home with Lana. You don’t want her. It’s … it’s cruel, that’s what it is.’

He tapped the bottle against the floor like a cat twitching its tail.

‘Stephen, don’t be an asshole.
Cruel
. Jeez. You should’ve seen my parents’ faces when I introduced them to Lana. They were so fucking happy. So …
relieved
. Made me want to cry. Or … or kick them, or something.’ He wrenched the bottle from his finger and it came away with a deep
musical pop. ‘Anyway, she’s got no reason to complain. I’m gonna do it with her later. I guess. And I mean, let’s face it.
A girl like that’s lucky to get a boyfriend at all.’

‘But Lana’s beautiful.’

‘Are you kidding? Total lard-ass.’

‘Oh, fuck off, Adam! Why are you such a pig?’

He put his hands on my shoulders and told me to calm down. It was late, he said, and any minute Lana might decide to call
her dad to come drive us home. Then before you knew it, we’d be in the car saying goodbye forever in front of Mr Kovalenko,
and did that sound like fun to me? I had to admit it didn’t.

Adam started to kiss me. Soft and lazy at first, and then more intense. We stayed like that, sliding around on the floor,
gripping each other’s backs and hair for leverage, sloppy and drunk. I wondered if this was the last time I’d be kissing Adam,
or anybody. Maybe Lana really was about to call her dad. And where was Lana anyway? I opened my eyes and glanced sideways
to check the clock above the doorframe.
Oh, there she is. Standing in the doorway watching us
.

What?

I shoved Adam away. He looked sulky and confused for a second. Then he saw what I saw.

Her face. Like a child who’d just been slapped in the middle of a
laugh. Lana who had a smart answer for everything. Saying nothing at all. In the party dress she’d worn to impress him.

Adam was babbling away at top speed. Some stupid explanation or excuse. I wasn’t listening and neither was Lana.

I closed my eyes. I could still see her.

She never would have hurt me like this.

Adam scrambled to his feet, trying to approach her, still rambling on and on. I stayed in a miserable heap by the fridge in
my borrowed black clothes, digging my fingers into my scalp. She left. He went after her.

She’d sat beside me and held my hand the day I found out Stanley wanted me to be an abortion. Gave me her father’s guitar.
Kissed me when I was sad. This morning by the lockers, nervous and hopeful, trying to cover it up. I’d been so scared that
Adam was going to make her cry.

I took a few shaky steps around the kitchen, looked at my reflection in the window over the sink and called myself every name
I could think of. But it was stupid – they were just words. I’d ruined everything.

Then Adam was back. I saw his shape in the window behind me.

‘I don’t know where she went.’

He swore. I swore. We paced around, bumping into counters and tables, knocking over empty bottles. Adrenaline was giving me
a second wind and I couldn’t believe I’d just been moping and whining on the floor over this guy.

‘Looks like I’ll be bunking at your place,’ he said. I realised I didn’t care.

‘She’s my best friend. Goddammit, why am I so stupid!’ I kicked at the cupboards behind me. ‘I mean, I don’t even
know
you!’

He was standing with his back to the stove, huddled into himself. ‘You think she’ll start telling people?’

I stared at Adam, greenly. ‘Oh,
fuck
! She wouldn’t. Would she?’

‘Looked pretty mad. Might’ve heard me saying she was lucky to have a boyfriend cause she’s fat.’

‘Yeah, thanks for that. Oh,
Jesus
. What are we gonna do?’

He mumbled that he didn’t know and I was stressing him out, kept picking empty beer bottles off the table until he found one
that was more than half full. He took a long drink. I stuck my head under the cold water tap. No effect. Adam shoved me out
of the way so he could spit into the sink.

‘There was a butt in there.’ We faced each other. I turned off the tap.

‘We’re screwed. Adam? We’re screwed.’

‘No.’ Hands on my shoulders again. ‘No, we’re not. Don’t say that.’

‘We are.’

‘Stop it.’

He turned away from me, messed up his hair, closed his eyes. Then he was walking in circles around the kitchen, snapping his
fingers distractedly and mumbling to himself. At first I thought he might be praying. Then I recognised the words ‘fear’,
and ‘mind killer’, and realised this was the Bene Gesserit ‘Litany Against Fear’ from
Dune
. I wished I could remember how it went. It seemed to be calming him.

He stopped. Stood up straighter. ‘I got it.’

I waited.

‘Lana’s not going to tell everybody.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘Because you are.’

‘Are you mental?’

He tried to explain, said it would be so much better for me this way, that I wouldn’t have to wonder who knew because I’d
be telling them myself. Lana would turn it into a nasty rumour, he went on, but I
could say it plain and simple – just another fact. School was almost over anyway, and I was going to have to be an adult and
own up to myself, not some kid with a sock drawer full of secrets.

‘Trust me. You act like nothing’s wrong and nobody else will.’ Adam was smiling, his eyes bright. He seemed evangelical, or
insane. And he went further. We could make this a pact, he said. If I went first, he’d tell his parents the truth as well.
As soon as he got home. He’d tell his whole school. I watched him building momentum as he spoke, gaining confidence, getting
taller. Convincing himself instead of me.

‘No more fake girlfriends, huh? You’re right. It’s a shitty thing to do to somebody.’ That unsettling smile. ‘You’ll never
regret this, Stephen.’

I pictured it. A big announcement, here at this party. Then nothing but silence. Faces staring back. Some shocked, some repulsed,
some smirking. And afterwards. An invisible label hanging over my house. Mom hassled at the grocery store. Me getting the
shit kicked out of me every day. Mark. Oh, God. Mark.

‘It won’t work. I can’t do it, Adam. I can’t.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna do it for you.’

He clasped my hand, like a fighter pilot off on his last mission. Then he turned and strode out of the kitchen. I blinked
and watched his plaid back receding.

Was this a dream? Was I still in the hayloft, asleep?

I stood in the kitchen doorway. The lights were off in the rooms outside it and I stumbled as my eyes adjusted to the dark.
I trailed after Adam. Where was he going in such a hurry? Past the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. Through the living room.

Oh, Jesus
.

Just then everything around me slowed down to nothing, like we were all stuck in syrup, because I’d figured it out.

He was heading for the basement.

Down those stairs was a room, more than likely still full of people. There was a fake bar in that room, with a very loud bell
hanging over the counter. The type you’d ring if you were going to make some kind of announcement.

He wouldn’t.

Would he?

No. Fuck, no. Run. Stop him
.

Oh, God, no. No, no, no
.

Adam was already at the foot of the stairs to the basement. I threw myself down the steps after him, hands skidding over the
railing. There was a crash behind me. I ignored it.

The hallway, green carpet with its heavy mildew smell. Door to the rec room coming up. I could hear music. The Pogues. Accordions,
fiddles, Irish grumbling. It sounded bigger than it should have, echoing.
Please stop, Adam
.

The possibilities crowded into my head. Mark finds out. My mother finds out – and from somebody on the street, not me. Give
it a couple days and the teachers know. The janitor knows. The milkman fucking knows. In Riverside gossip travels in nanoseconds.
My life wouldn’t be worth living.

I caught up, grabbed his shirt – my shirt, looking stretched and unfamiliar in my hands. ‘Adam,’ I said, terrified and out
of breath, ‘this is such a bad idea—’

He shoved me away. ‘Quit it, will ya? I’ll never be able to go through with this if you keep—’

‘Good. Don’t go through with it. Don’t!’

Adam thought he was helping. That was the crazy part. But he’d never have to see these people again. I would. Nine o’clock
in homeroom on Monday morning and every day after that until the summer wore down or I died of embarrassment.

‘Look, you’re gonna wreck everything!’ I was pacing backwards in front of him now. ‘I finally got people here to like me.
I mean, for years I didn’t have any friends except Lana and Mark. Now they’ll all go back to hating my guts again.’

‘Well, if they do, fuck ’em. They’re not worth it.’

What was I going to have to do – punch him? Would that even work? I wasn’t what you’d call competent at punching people. And
how could I hit somebody I’d spent most of the night making out with?

Hesitated too long. He was already pushing past me and into the rec room.

I followed. ‘Fuck’s sake, Adam, why do you want to do this to me?’

‘It’s for your own good.’

‘No, it isn’t!’

People were watching us. I took in the room, panic making me hyper-aware of every detail. The low, white ceiling in whorls
of plaster. The fake-wood-panelled walls, the calendar by the bookshelves, a tractor on a brown furrowed field for June. Empty
bottles were shored up around the bar counter like they’d arrived with the tide.

There were maybe twenty left out of the crowds I’d seen earlier, most of them girls from my class. Everybody seemed to be
in a great mood – jumping around to The Pogues, flush-faced and grinning, loving the hell out of being wasted and pretending
to be Irish. Patty Marsh was
luxuriantly drunk, bright red cheeks and brighter eyes, bouncing with her arm thrown around Evan McDonald. And there were
the MacBride sisters leaning against the bar – Eleanor smirking at a private joke, Emily laughing and lazy with her head thrown
back. Was Lana part of this group? I couldn’t see her.

My stomach had dissolved. Walking into a nightmare, everybody smiling. Except me.

Adam had turned his back again. I grabbed a handful of plaid fabric at his elbow. ‘Adam, please.’ Trying to keep my voice
down. ‘I really like you. Don’t fuck everything up for me.’

He ignored this and swung himself up on the bar counter, pushing Emily to one side. She looked quizzical, annoyed, took a
swig from her bottle of beer and pinched his ass. He turned and smiled down at her. All happening in slow motion.

Adam leaned forward and hit the pause button on the tape player. The music stopped.

‘Hey!’

‘Fuck off!’

‘Turn that back on!’

Well, he had their attention all right. There was no need for him to ring that stupid bell next, but that’s what he did. It
almost made my teeth hurt, the sound of it.

I’d crossed around to the front of the bar, clinging to the edge and staring up at Adam, trying to will him into silence.

‘Just gotta … just gotta say something, guys.’ Adam’s face had gone deep red, but his voice carried to every corner of the
room. ‘You all know Stephen Shulevitz here, right?’

Somebody in the crowd went, ‘Duh!’ Someone else went, ‘Who?’ There was a splash of giggling.

I couldn’t look at any of them, digging my fingers into the back of my neck, whispering, ‘No, no, no, no, no …’

‘Well, Stephen and me … that’s to say, I mean, the two of us …’

Oh, Jesus. Here it comes
.

Adam glanced at the floor. ‘Both of us are …’

It was very quiet. He closed his eyes.

‘We’re both a couple of fucking Jews, man! Anybody got a problem with that?’

Relief. Like somebody knocking the wind out of me. That asshole. I was grinning. That complete tool. Fucking Adam. I risked
a glance over my shoulder. People were looking at each other, shrugging and mystified. Somebody was saying we should turn
the music back on.

‘Yay! Jews!’ It was Emily MacBride. She started clapping idiotically from behind the bar, and there was a bit of half-hearted
applause from the group in return. Emily was nuts, but people liked her, usually followed where she led.

Adam looked down at me sorrowfully. ‘I couldn’t do it, Stephen. I’m so sorry. I’m a gutless
fucking
failure …’

‘Don’t be sorry. That’s fine. That’s great!’

‘No, it isn’t. It’s not good enough.’ He held up a palm for attention. ‘Hey! Everybody! There’s one more thing.’

And he leaned down, grabbed my head and gave me a big horny kiss right on the lips.

The fucker, the fucker, the fucker
.

He was above me. I couldn’t push him away, couldn’t get the leverage to break it off. I closed my eyes, out of embarrassment,
confusion. Maybe I kissed him back, just for a second. Maybe I didn’t know what else to do.

I could hear the room going nuts.

‘Oh, my God …’

‘Gross!’

‘What the fuck!’

‘Stephen?’

It built. General noise of shock and repulsion. I felt a shuffle through the crowd of somebody leaving, more than one. Maybe
a lot more.

‘Yay! Gay Jews!’ Emily MacBride, in exactly the same tone of voice as before. The same demented clapping. Then nothing.

Adam let me go and I stumbled backwards, found myself facing the group. Every eye in the place was on me. They were all waiting.
Waiting for me to explain myself.

I was going to throw up. I was sure of it.

I started babbling instead, like a moron.

‘Well … you know it goes through the mother. And I was never educated in it or anything. So. So, I don’t … I don’t really
think I am … I don’t consider myself to be … Jewish, really.’

Still no one had said a word. I wanted to sink quietly into the carpet, to die.

I heard my own voice again, as if it was coming from across the room.

‘But the other thing …’ Squeezed my eyes shut.
Am I really going to say this?
It all seemed to be happening without me.

‘The other thing. That one’s true. I actually am … you know.’ Glanced up at the crowd, too quick to register anything, then
stared back down at my feet. ‘Gay.’ An almost physical shock, the word coming out of my mouth. Floating above our heads like
skywriting.

I was squirming, felt my face burning up.

So quiet.

For the first time, I understood how heavy silence can be. The air felt practically solid, molecules of oxygen suddenly hard-edged
things,
impossible to draw into my lungs. I kept staring downwards. The carpet fibres were a light nicotine brown, rough and packed
together, like carved-up bits of brain pressed stiffly into the floor. There were splotches and spills, stray bits of hair.
A lonely crescent of toenail.

Somebody took me by the shoulders. Emily MacBride. I concentrated on her face. Collapsing into myself in slow motion, terrified
to look anywhere else.

‘Stephen.’ I knew everybody was watching, like we were people on a stage. ‘Stephen, why didn’t you tell us?’

I wanted to say that it was nobody’s business and I’d never trusted any of them in the first place, but that’s not what came
out.

‘I … I didn’t really know myself for sure. Until maybe a couple months ago. And … I thought you’d all hate me. Think I was
gross and stuff.’

Some girl in the crowd went, ‘Aw!’ This frustrated me, but I couldn’t lose focus on Emily.

‘Oh, Stephen,’ she said. ‘None of us would ever think that.’

I tried not to laugh. Hadn’t she seen these people getting collectively grossed out by that kiss, just a few minutes ago?
Yet I could sense the room realigning itself to agree with Emily – a wall of certainty. Even a few girls murmuring ‘Yeah,’
along with her. I felt like asking what was the matter with them that they didn’t remember the last ten minutes of their lives.
But, no. Couldn’t say that.

‘Everybody’s listening to us, huh?’ I half-whispered this. Emily laughed. There was some rustling from the crowd then, and
a few people tried to put together a conversation. But it subsided like tree branches rattling in the wind. Of course they
were listening. They wanted to see what would happen next. I was clutching Emily’s hand. She was holding a half-empty bottle
of Labatt’s in the other.

Emily looked around, smiling broadly, a game-show hostess all of a sudden. ‘Well! You know what I think?’ She raised her bottle
of beer. A toast?

She smiled at me again, lit from within, pulled me towards her. Then she held the bottle higher, above our heads.

Turned it upside-down and dumped it all over me.

Shock of the cold, chemical water, shock of the smell. I swiped it away from my eyes, felt it running down my neck and soaking
my back.

Behind me I heard, ‘What the fuck?’ and ‘Emily!’ and ‘Emily, what the fuck?’

I couldn’t move. Wanted to ask her what I’d done to make her mad, if she was crazy, if we both were. Emily was grinning like
she’d just heard the best news in the world and couldn’t wait to share it with me. She ran her hands through my hair, messing
it up. Little flecks and droplets of beer went flying off my head.

She kissed me on the forehead. Kissed me on the cheek, just under my eye. Kissed the other side of my face too. It felt so
light – like getting a goodnight peck from your baby sister.

I said, ‘Emily …,’ without being aware that I was saying anything. She kissed me on the mouth then – a quick smack, then pulled
me into a hug. A real one, close and solid, hands moving in reassurance across my back. I started to laugh, hanging on to
her. What else was I going to do?

‘Congratulations.’ She breathed this, over my shoulder. ‘It must be great to know who you are. I wish I did.’ My eyes were
closed. No idea how the rest of the room was taking this.

Then I heard somebody clapping. Was it Adam? Or Emily’s sister? Another person joined in. Then more. This wasn’t like the
muddled slapping of hands that Adam got when he told everybody we were Jews.
This was an actual round of applause. Something that built on itself, that grew and grew. So we were on a stage after all.

Emily let go. She turned me around, pushed me at her sister Eleanor.

‘Your turn,’ she said.

Eleanor had a bottle in her hand too. I heard Patty Marsh yelling, ‘Beer him, Eleanor!’ Another girl took it up.

‘Beer him!’

‘Come on, Eleanor.’

‘Go for it!’

Eleanor looked around, shrugged. She pulled me close and upended her beer over my head. There was a swelling of applause as
it hit, stinging my eyes, and somebody saying, ‘All right!’

Then Eleanor did the same thing as her sister: kissed my forehead, both sides of my face, a quick one on the mouth, and wrapped
me in a hug so tight I could barely breathe. I just hung on.

‘Me next!’ Patty Marsh was shouting from the group in front of the bar. But she had to wait. Somebody – Adam, maybe – put
The Pogues back on and everybody went back to jumping up and down and pretending to be Irish. Except now they were also passing
me through the crowd – not much of a crowd now, only twelve or fifteen people left. I was grinning helplessly, my head spinning,
hardly able to stand up. Got pushed into the arms of a jock girl named Cynthia.

‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘What a waste!’ My head was splattered with beer again as she poured the dregs of her bottle over
me, then reached up and kissed me quickly – same as the MacBride sisters: the head, twice on the face, once on the mouth,
then pulled me into a fierce hug and told me congratulations. So it was a ritual now.

The Pogues on the tape player joined in with a sing-along chorus fit for a rainy night in the pub, something about beer and
whiskey and
saying goodbye. The girls were pressing in, pushing me from one to the other – everybody wanting to be part of this game,
this collective insanity.

‘Give him here!’

‘My turn.’

‘Stephen! Over here now. I’m doing it next.’

Patty Marsh was facing me, quivering with laughter, and half a bottle of Miller went glugging down my back. ‘So that’s who
gave you the hickey. Too funny.’ She kissed me, held on tight. The sound of accordions, tin whistles and drunken farewells
at a train station flowed from the tape player.

Evan McDonald splashed beer on my head. ‘I’m not gonna fucking kiss you,’ he said, ‘but, yeah. Congratulations. I think.’
He shook my hand, clapped me on the back. Passed me on to the next one.

I was laughing so hard I was almost hysterical, shoved through the crush of my fake Irish friends. Then I was at the end of
the room, embracing a shaky Rachel Clements. Was that everybody? No. One left.

Adam poured a couple ounces of Budweiser onto my hair. Then he took my face in his hands and kissed me: light on the hormones,
heavy on the romance, Prince Charming and Prince Nerdly. Probably he was laying it on for the girls, who rewarded him with
a smattering of applause, some of them crooning ‘Aw!’

I heard Evan McDonald. ‘You don’t have to keep doing that, you know.’

And Patty saying, ‘Shut up. I think it’s sweet.’

The same people who’d been so shocked and grossed out, here in this room, not twenty minutes ago. This was insane.